~ Exploring the Age of Consequences

Monthly Archives: September 2012

It was almost too much to comprehend. In crossing a space of less than one thousand meters, we had crossed nearly 20,000 years of time.

It happened late one afternoon in the small but lovely Beune Valley, near the village of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, during our tour through the heart of Cro-Magnon country, in southwest France. We had climbed to the tippy top of a medieval castle on the southern side of the valley, which gave us a commanding view of a landscape that had been more-or-less continuously occupied by Homo sapiens for over 45,000 years, and by Homo Neanderthalensis for more than 300,000 years before that (until we sapiens drove them out). That’s a helluva lot of history for one small valley – and potentially a lot of lessons to be learned, I thought as we surveyed the scene from the medieval heights.

The area had been a refuge for humans during the intense cold periods that gripped Europe off-and-on during the Ice Ages and the numerous rock shelters in the region became desirable habitation sites, including one just a short distance across the valley from where we stood. It’s called Abri du Cap Blanc and it features an exceptional frieze of life-size horses and other animals sculpted into the back wall of the shelter. Dating to 18,000 years BP (before present), the frieze remains one of the great masterpieces of monumental art of the Cro-Magnon period – a period that began with the arrival of Homo sapiens to the area circa 45,000 years BP and ended around 10,000 years BP.

Most art associated with the Cro-Magnon are the famous cave paintings of wild animals found at Lascaux and other sites, or the ‘mobile’ art carved into elk and mammoth antlers and carried with individuals as they traveled across the chilly landscape in search of something to kill and eat. Rarely did these hunters take time to laboriously carve images of animals into the walls of their temporary shelters (using only flint tools), but at Abri du Cap Blanc – for an unknown reason – someone did, luckily for us today.

We visited the shelter earlier in the afternoon, joining a small group of fellow tourists. A national monument, the rock opening is protected by a wooden shelter attached to a visitor center and thus kept in permanent darkness, except for the lights that our guide turned on and off for effect. I lingered behind the group as we made our way along the frieze, which includes bison and deer along with the famous horses. I couldn’t understand what was being said anyway. For some reason, the French don’t make much of an effort to accommodate English-speakers (the guides rarely spoke English anywhere we went), so I hung back to absorb the ambience of the shelter and gaze at the unusual artwork in relative quiet. What motivated the artist or artists to carve these images? It wasn’t purely an artistic impulse. That’s because there is a consistency to Cro-Magnon imagery over the span of 20,000 years that indicates it served a religious or social function as well. Wild horses, for example, were very popular. Why? And why here? No one really knows.

Here’s an image of the most famous horse sculpture at Cap Blanc, plus a reproduction of a painting in the visitor center:

By medieval times, twenty thousand years later, the valley was still occupied by humans, who were still earning a living from the land – as they are today. After the departure of the Cro-Magnon, the valley became the site of scattered villages as the Agricultural Revolution took off. Next, marauding tribal bands raided and sacked the region for centuries, until the arrival of Ceasar’s legions brought some measure of stability and peace. With the fall of the Roman Empire, the area endured another round of political and economic mayhem until the feudal system solidified, represented by the medieval tower we had climbed. Later, of course, came the tourists.

Gen and I stood at the tippy top of the castle for a long time. We had come a long way to stand there, at considerable expense, so we were determined to soak up every ounce of ambience we could – until our son impatiently signaled that the castle was about to close. It was more than time and money, however. Or the view. The idea of the landscape fascinated us. The humanness of this place was as old as the art we had been seeing in the caves. It wasn’t as attractive as, say, a woolly mammoth on a wall, but in many ways it was just as impressive. We stood in silence, just looking.

Somehow, humans hadn’t messed up this land – at least not the way we’ve messed up countless other landscapes over the centuries all over the world. It looked intact. Maybe we were being fooled – a guidebook said that many 19th-century farms in the area had been allowed to return to a ‘natural’ forest condition, no doubt for touristic effect. Still, it was inspiring to see a place that had no obvious signs of hard use, despite its incomparable length of human activity. There were lessons here about our behavior, both ancient and modern, I was certain. What were they? Would they be useful for the future?

I wondered for a reason: it’s looking more and more like we’re heading into another period of tumultuous times, if news headlines are any indication. The rapid disintegration of the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean this summer, for example, apparently portends all sorts of trouble ahead climate-wise. How will we respond? When Cro-Magnons walked out the Beune Valley for the last time, the planet was in the process of trading the frigid stresses of the Ice Age for the warm stability of the Holocene. That stability is likely ending, say scientists. We aren’t returning to the Ice Ages, however – we’re moving into something else altogether. Something hotter. What did that mean? Standing at the tippy top of the castle, I thought: “We’re going to need our inner Cro-Magnon, I bet.”

For the past two weeks, I’ve had the privilege of traveling in Europe with my family, leaving the so-called ‘real’ world behind. I say ‘so-called’ because by the end of our trip the distinction between what was ‘real’ and what was ‘virtual’ blurred in a way that left me disoriented. I’m not referring to anything digital or electronic when I use the word ‘virtual’ (3-D versus 2-D), rather I mean the fine line between the actual and the wishful – i.e., what works in the real world and what we think ought to work – a magical, parallel universe that I call, for want of a better word, virtuality.

Take the American presidential campaign, for example. It’s a consequential event with significant ramifications on a wide spectrum of economic and political levels, all real – no? Viewed from the Europe, however, the race between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney looked at best surreal, at worst unreal – as in detached from reality. Despite the candidates’ rhetoric, it’s not actually a contest between Big Visions, unless you believe in hallucinations. It’s a punting game, with a lot of smoke-and-mirrors and mudslinging. Neither aspirant has a credible plan for the Future – not one that my children would consider credible anyway, were they old enough to understand what was being said. Instead, it’s a campaign of virtuality, a rhetorical joust in a magical landscape of economic unicorns and jobless pixies.

In contrast, the supposedly superficial landscape of touristy Europe, with its golden beaches, leisurely cafes, carefully coiffured chateaus, quaint medieval castles, haute cuisine, and groomed farms and vineyards struck us as more real than the headlines we read daily in the International Herald Tribune. We knew that rural France, where we spent most of our time, has been gussied up over the years for tourists like ourselves, but the more we drove around looking at the old stone buildings and the more time we spent exploring the lengthy tenure of human history in the region, the more substantial it felt. In comparison, the virtuality of American politics grew thinner by the day. Obviously, Europe has its own fantastical politics – the inability of leaders to stamp out the ongoing, slow-boil Euro crisis is evidence of that – but Europe’s hallucinations seem more sober and less bizarre than ours. Maybe that’s why the French smoke so many cigarettes.

Here’s a photo from our explorations:

What’s reality and what’s virtuality today? Once upon a time, I felt like I knew. Now, however, I just feel bewildered.

Take, for example, the reality of the long, hot summer America just experienced. A few days ago, NOAA announced that June, July, and August temperatures were the highest ever recorded in American history. Another report detailed the explosion of plant and tree pollen that has accompanied these hot temperatures – likely a result of a desperate attempt by Nature to ensure reproductive success. Allergy sufferers have flooded hospitals and clinics, apparently. For millions of Americans, this is more than enough reality. But has the economic hardship and physical suffering caused by all this reality broken through to our political leaders? Not that I can tell. That’s because they live in a parallel universe where actions do not have consequences and all stories have happy endings.

Europe had a hot summer as well. We saw miles of dead and dying forest at one point and the corn in the fields near our base in Beynac looked abandoned. Indeed, one vendor we spoke with on market day in St. Cyprien said that August had been essentially rain-free, causing crops to wilt and die. He shrugged. However, none of this gloomy news put a dent in the tourist traffic as far as we could tell. The hotels were packed with visitors, the narrow roads clogged with all manner of vehicles (at all hours too), and restaurants overflowed with eaters, many of whom were French. In this, France shared a lively virtuality with America: all is well, carry on. Look below the surface, however, and you discover a land and a people that have endured centuries of harsh reality – war, poverty, hunger, abuse. You see evidence of it in the buildings, despite the gussy-up. A historical reality is embedded in this land that America can’t hold a torch to.

It extends backward 45,000 years as well, as I’ll explain in the next posting.

Less than two weeks after my visit to New Orleans, and exactly seven years after Hurricane Katrina shattered the Big Easy, Louisiana found itself under siege again. This time the culprit was Hurricane Isaac, a huge Category 1 storm that stalled over the southern part of the state, dumping between 12-24 inches of rain on land and sending 11 feet of sea surge up against rebuilt levees. Its 80mph winds howled for more than two days, knocking out power to more than half a million people. Although Isaac was no Katrina, it certainly was a serious storm. It also reminded residents of their vulnerability.

“We didn’t think it was going to be like that,” one said. “The storm stayed over the top of us. For Katrina, we got eight inches of water. Now we have thirteen feet.”

“This is worse than Katrina,” said another resident. “Katrina came through, did her damage and was gone.”

Still, the rebuilt levees and other improved protections, constructed to the tune of $14 billion, did their job, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. Residents were better prepared this time as well, including the deployment of new storm-proof homes in poverty-stricken, low-lying areas that were devastated by Katrina.

Here’s a photo from this week’s storm:

What isn’t clear yet is how the region’s wetlands and coastal marshes fared under Isaac’s blows. Scientists have determined that for every mile of coastal wetlands, storm surge can be reduced by three to eight inches. If the buffer of wetlands between the sea and a city is miles deep – as it once was – then those inches can be the difference between a city under water and a city free from floods (recall that parts of New Orleans are six feet below sea level). One of the reasons why Katrina devastated the region was due to the loss of this buffer. That’s because there has been an incredible loss of coastal wetlands over the decades as a result of human manipulation of the mighty Mississippi River. Sediment that once spread out over the marshes during a flood is now channeled way out into the Gulf of Mexico.

As I learned on my recent visit, efforts are being made to restore some of the region’s wetlands so that they might again provide their buffering function. As a collateral benefit, the amount of carbon dioxide that coastal plants absorb and store in the soil – called blue carbon – as part of this restoration effort is potentially very high. Since both of these ecosystems services have important benefits for humans, as well as other living organisms, you might think that some of the $14 billion spent on repairing the damage caused by Katrina went into the restoration of critical wetlands. The truth is almost none of it did. But even if money had been available, what would state and federal officials have done with it?

I put the question to my hosts, Dr. John Day and Dr. Sarah Mack, as we drove around looking at restoration projects. Their answer was both simple and extraordinarily complicated: let the Mississippi River be free. The river created the marshes and wetlands with its silt, they said, and only the river can recreate them, at least on a scale that matters. The river needs to be unshackled so that it can flood again, spreading its bounty of silt across the delta, building up the wetlands. Simple.

The complicated part, of course, is implementation. What are the chances, I asked the scientists, that the Mississippi could be freed from its bondage to do its good work again? Nil, they admitted. For one thing, the Mississippi is a transportation lifeline to America’s heartland, with billions and billions dollars’ worth of goods plying its waters each year. Everyone upriver who depends on the Mississippi for food, fuel, and commerce doesn’t give a damn about healthy wetlands and won’t abide any plan substantially alters the river’s fixed course. Powerful economic and political forces would block any attempt to unshackle the great river.

What was the answer then, other than the small restoration demonstration projects that I was being shown? If we can’t let the river be free, I asked, what are the chances of properly buffering New Orleans and other urban centers in the long run?

Nil, they said again. And that makes the prognosis grim. “Another Katrina is inevitable,” Dr. Day said, “it’s just a matter of when. And there’ll be another Katrina after that.”

Watching Isaac’s progress, I felt a strong case of the carbon blues. We know what to do, how to do it, and what the results will be if we don’t. And still we do nothing except apply bandaids. And repair power lines and bail water, as residents did this week. To many, Hurricane Isaac was a success story – the levees held! To scientists, however, it was a reaffirmation of the inevitable Category 5 storm over the horizon. Maybe the next time I’m in New Orleans I’ll try the local drink called a ‘hand grenade’ after all!

In any case, this is a good place to take a break for a few weeks while I take a vacation. Here’s a photo of where we are heading: